Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (9 page)

Singing wartime songs, calling up wartime memories, running the bar and eating bacon and eggs around midnight left little time and I went to bed with my intended questions unanswered. I lay awake for a while, listening to the murmur of the sea and trying not to think of Bobby in bed with her three-fingered husband.

It was not until Sunday morning that I suggested to Sam a ‘constitutional'. This meant a brisk walk by the grey, heaving sea in the teeth of a minor gale which might, for all I knew, have been blowing from the steppes of Russia across the flat north of Europe to send teeth chattering in Coldsands-on-Sea. It was in these adverse weather conditions that I broached my subject.

‘Bristol bombers.' I threw the words into the wind. ‘That's what he was flying.'

‘Fairly short-range,' Sam told me. ‘They went after arms depots, factories, fighter stations in northern France.'

‘So the crew was . . .'

‘Pilot officer -'

‘That was Jerry Jerold.'

‘Rear gunner -'

‘“Tail-End” Charlie.'

‘And a navigator of course.'

‘Of course. I'd forgotten about the navigator.'

‘They wouldn't get very far without him.'

‘I suppose they wouldn't. That's three. Did they always fly together? I didn't get to know a lot about bombers.'

‘Yes. The chaps I knew in Bristols always went out with the same team. So long as they stayed alive.'

‘And that wasn't necessarily very long?'

‘As I remember, they were pretty good aims with anti-aircraft guns in northern France. And German fighters of course.'

‘Jerry Jerold and “Tail-End” Charlie were lucky to survive?'

‘We were all lucky.' Sam Dougherty had stopped for a cigarette, sheltering his flickering lighter from the wind with his cupped hand. ‘Unbelievably lucky.'

‘And you fought on to the end of the war?'

‘To the very last day of it. You know that, Rumpole.'

‘Jerry and Charlie missed quite a lot of it. According to Simon, their plane was brought down.'

‘They were prisoners - all three of them?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘So they were all lucky.'

‘Not really. Not Jerry and Charlie.'

‘But they survived the war.'

‘Oh, yes. They survived the war all right. It was the peace that killed them. The point is, Sam, I don't feel I know enough about them. I'm defending Jerry's son, who's meant to have killed them both.'

‘I know, I read about it. Bloody awful business.'

‘Is there anyone you know in Bristol bombers, anyone who could tell us a bit more, anyone who might have known them? Or knew more about their story?'

Sam didn't answer me. Instead he sounded appalled. ‘You're actually defending that boy?'

‘Yes, Sam. I'm actually defending him.'

‘Why on earth are you doing that?'

‘Because he tells me he didn't do it. Because it's my job. Mainly because I want to avoid another death. Please, Sam, if you can think of anyone who might remember . . .'

‘I'm a bit out of touch with the old crowd now. Living in the pub and all that. But I suppose I could ask around.'

‘Oh, yes.' I did my best to sound encouraging. ‘Please ask around.'

We were further along the shoreline, sliding on the wet pebbles which gave Coldsands an uncomfortable beach. A golden retriever was lifting its leg to pee in the edge of the foam that clawed at the shingle. Its owner, a grey-haired woman in a flapping mackintosh, stood calling the dog and waving a lead, but her cries were blown away on the wind. I asked ‘Three Fingers' if the operations over northern France were particularly scaring.

‘Scaring? Of course, we were all scared. Every single day, scared almost to death.'

‘Almost, but not quite?'

‘Every bloody day,' Sam confessed, ‘I thought it'd be my last. You saw how horribly easy it was when you scored a direct hit. The plane buzzing around burst into flames. That's the way I'll go, you told yourself. In a bloody great ball of fire dropping out of the sky.'

We had reached a refuge, a glassed-in bus shelter on the sea front, when he said, ‘And if it didn't happen one day, you were damn sure you'd buy it the next, or the next after that. You got a feeling you'd do anything to stop it.'

‘Anything?'

‘Well, anything within reason.'

‘What would that entail?'

‘I don't know. I just couldn't think. I suppose that's why I went on doing it.'

‘And you survived. And now you're happily married.' I tried to keep the note of envy out of my voice.

‘I suppose I am,' he conceded with, I thought, a surprising reluctance. ‘Bobby's a good girl. She doesn't nag me about the amount of whisky I get through. She's not like my bloody doctor. Well, I told him I have to drink enough to go to sleep without dreaming.'

I watched the raindrops chasing each other down the glass of the shelter. At the end of our bench an elderly tramp was muttering as he unwrapped a sandwich from a sheet of newspaper. Which war, I wondered, did he dream about?

‘You had bad dreams, then?' I asked ‘Three Fingers' Sam.

‘Still have them. About catching on fire and falling out of the bloody sky. Sometimes you wondered what the point of it all was. People killing each other. We never said that of course.'

‘No, we never said it.'

‘There was a bloke used to go into one of the pubs we went to. He was in some sort of reserved occupation connected to the Ministry of Food or something. He was always saying there wasn't any point in going on with the war and Hitler had some of the right ideas anyway.'

‘You never agreed with that?'

‘No. We just laughed at him. I think someone once beat him up. Did you lose your faith in the war, Rumpole?'

‘Oh, I was in the ground staff.'

‘“Grounded Rumpole”.'

‘Perhaps that made it easier to stay patriotic.'

‘Anyway, it's all over now.'

Not quite over, I thought, in the Penge bungalows.

 

I said goodbye to Sam after the bar closed on Sunday afternoon. He was standing under the fairy lights, contemplating a solitary whisky. ‘Bobby,' he told me, ‘has gone upstairs to have a kip. She asked me to say her goodbyes.'

‘Well, then,' I said, ‘goodbye.'

‘You didn't come to ask me all these questions, did you, Rumpole? You came up here to see her.'

‘Partly,' I had to admit.

‘Partly?' He sounded doubtful. ‘Perhaps she ought to have married you. Barrister at law might have made a better husband than pub keeper on the sauce.'

‘She loved you,' I told him.

‘Was it me? Was it the wings on the uniform and every day going out to die. I had that advantage over you, Rumpole. You were always down on the ground, weren't you, and likely to stay alive.'

So, accepting the situation as one of the inevitable results of the war, I left Coldsands without the goodbye kiss I had, no doubt foolishly, looked forward to.

On the slow train back to London, I re-read the prosecution statements of all the ex-airmen who had been at the reunion. None of them claimed to have been the navigator who flew with Pilot Officer Jerry and ‘Tail-End' Charlie, nor was there any indication of who he might have been. I decided to ask Bonny Bernard to make further enquiries.

10

‘Mr Rochford, you live over the shop Sound Universe in Coldharbour Lane?'

I had felt the usual courtroom terrors of a white wig: sweaty hands, dry mouth and a strong temptation to run out of the door and take up work as a quietly unostentatious bus conductor or lavatory attendant. But once I had asked the first question in my cross-examination of the chief prosecution witness in Uncle Cyril's case, my head cleared, my hands no longer sweated and a possibly misleading confidence came over me.

‘Me and my wife live there, yes,' the shop owner answered my question.

The man from whom Uncle Cyril was alleged to have stolen radios and an egg-timer was tall and scrawny with glasses and a look of perpetual anxiety. And there was I, in my rather too white wig and much too new gown, cross-examining with my guns blazing, uncomfortably aware that I might be shot down in a ball of fire at any minute by ‘Custodial Cookson', the not so learned judge at London Sessions, who knew that Uncle Cyril had once been prepared to plead guilty and obviously took the view that this trial was a completely unnecessary waste of time for all concerned.

Behind me were the troops I had persuaded to follow me into battle, the Timson family, after I had made my stirring speech in the canteen. In the dock, Uncle Cyril was smiling in a detached sort of way, as though the proceedings were really nothing much to do with him. On the bench beside me sat the prosecutor, Vincent Caraway, an elderly junior with a grey moustache and a voice which seemed about to fade away in terminal boredom. He was reading his brief in another case, convinced that Uncle Cyril would be sent back to prison without any particular effort on his part being necessary.

Three scowling men sat in the front row of the public gallery, sending distinct messages of ill-will towards me as I conducted one of my earliest cross-examinations. The eldest, the Timsons told me, was ‘Nighty', the undisputed leader of the rival clan, celebrated for saying ‘Nighty-night' to those who frustrated his plans and who weren't, in some cases, expected to survive until the following morning.

‘So perhaps you'd like to tell us this, Mr Rochford, what time did you and your wife go to bed the night that Cyril Timson is alleged to have broken into your shop?'

‘Mr Rumpole,' ‘Custodial Cookson' was clearly losing whatever patience he had, ‘could you confine your cross-examination to relevant matters, or are you going to enquire at what time Mr and Mrs Rochford drank their final cup of Horlicks?' His Custodial Honour got what I felt was a cheap laugh from the jury with this Horlicks line. I tried to sound serious and judicial as a contrast to the jokey judge, although I was probably too young for it.

‘I think,' I said, ‘the jury may be interested in the suggestion that Mr and Mrs Rochford slept throughout this alleged break-in.'

‘Mr Rumpole! What do you mean by the word “alleged”? Are you suggesting there wasn't a break-in?'

‘If Your Honour will allow me to continue with my questions, the court will discover exactly what I am suggesting.' It was the first time I had been in the least bit rude, even to a mere London Sessions judge, and the effect of it was like that on a young girl who takes her first gulp of champagne. I'm afraid it went to my head. ‘Yes, Mr Rochford,' I went on before ‘Custodial Cookson' had time to interrupt again, ‘I think what this jury will want to know is what time you think you went to sleep, after, as His Honour said, you had your Horlicks and read your books?'

‘Books!' Mr Rochford looked at me with increased suspicion, as though I had suggested some bizarre form of sexual activity. ‘We do not read books. We work hard, Mr Rumpole. In Sound Universe.'

‘I'm sure you do. So may we assume you were asleep by midnight?'

‘Certainly by midnight.'

‘And you didn't wake up until about two a.m., when you went to the window and you say you saw my client, Cyril Timson, loading a television set into the back of a white van?'

‘That's right,' the witness was helpful enough to admit.

‘Mr Rumpole,' His Custodial Honour was restive again, ‘he has told us he was woken by sounds in the shop below.'

‘Quite right.' I attempted the reply aloof. ‘But that could only have been the last article, the television being removed from the shop. Is that right?'

‘It must have been.' Mr Rochford was thinking it over.

‘So someone broke open the shop door, disconnected your rather primitive burglar alarm and moved a number of radios out to a van without waking you or Mrs Rochford?'

‘So it would seem.'

‘A deep sleep!'

‘The wife and I are good sleepers.'

‘After perhaps a slug of whisky in the Horlicks?' It wasn't worth calling a joke, but it earned a laugh from the jury and a sharp reprimand from ‘Custodial Cookson'.

‘Mr Rumpole, you must learn that London Sessions is not a theatre! We're not a place of entertainment! Your client is facing a serious charge and you would do well to take it seriously.' It was not the last time I was to be accused of making jokes in court, and, I flatter myself, the jokes got better as the years went by. Jokes in court, I have discovered, usually side with the defence.

‘Very well,' I said. ‘In deference to His Honour's wishes, let me ask you a serious question. Do you know a Mr Terry Molloy?'

It was a question which seemed to cause the witness some difficulty. He was silent for a while and then said, with considerable reluctance, ‘I might do.'

‘I should think you might just possibly have heard of him. Isn't he your landlord?' Daisy Sampson, for all her red lips and seductive ways, had done her research well. The owner of the Sound Universe premises was Terry; it was only a part, Daisy had discovered, of his considerable investment in property around the south Brixton area.

‘I can't see that it matters in the least who's the landlord of the premises your client is said to have broken into. Mr Caraway, do you object to this line of questioning?'

‘Custodial Cookson' called for reinforcements. However, the experienced Vincent Caraway rose languidly to his feet as though it was really too much trouble to interrupt the childish performance of a white wig. ‘No objection, Your Honour. If my learned friend is allowed to continue, we may discover what point he is attempting to make.'